Can i get a scooter blenny?

[jfingers8]

I have a 90 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump and have 95 lbs. of live rock. For fish i have a foxface, flame angel, royal gramma, yellow watchman goby, purple firefish, algae blenny, 3 green chromis, 2 tru perc clownfish. I wanted to get a scooter blenny for my last fish my tank is 7 months old and everything has been perfect so far. I got a mini fuge in my sump but nothing big at all. I know scooter blennies are alot easier to take care of then mandarins could i support a scooter blenny? The more opinions the better. Thanks for your help everyone!

[Ninong]

Yes, you can probably get a "scooter blenny."

[Samper]

Neosynchiropus ocellatus

[Ninong]

Neosynchiropus ocellatus

Neosynchiropus ocellatus is invalid. That species is properly called Synchiropus ocellatus and yes, it is one of at least eight different species of fish that are sold as "scooter blennies," none of which are actually blennies -- most are dragonets.



P.S. -- The reason I didn't make an issue of trying to figure out exactly what fish he's thinking of getting is because any of the various fish sold as "scooter blennies" should be OK in his tank with his 95 lbs of live rock and no other fish with similar feeding habits.

And this species, Synchiropus ocellatus, is not really much different in its feeding habits than the other three species in the same genera that are commonly available: S. splendidus, S. picturatus, S. stellatus -- they all prefer copepods as their primary food.

And you may or may not be surprised that the most commonly used common names for the four most commonly available species in this genus are grossly inaccurate. The ocellated dragonet is usually sold as the scooter blenny, the starry dragonet is usually sold as the red scooter blenny, the mandarin dragonet is commonly sold as the mandarin goby and the picturesque dragonet is commonly sold as psychedelic mandarin or the spotted mandarin goby. So two of them are called blennies and two of them are called gobies. All of them are dragonets.

It's a fairly large genus:

Synchiropus Gill, 1859 -- valid
Synchiropus altivelis (Temminck and Schlegel, 1845) -- valid
Synchiropus atrilabiatus (Garman, 1899) -- valid -- blacklip dragonet, dragoncillo de asta
Synchiropus bartelsi Fricke, 1981 -- valid
Synchiropus circularis Fricke, 1984 -- valid
Synchiropus delandi Fowler, 1943 -- valid
Synchiropus grandoculis Fricke, 2000 -- valid
Synchiropus grinnelli Fowler, 1941 -- valid
Synchiropus hawaiiensis Fricke, 2000 -- valid
Synchiropus ijimae Jordan and Thompson, 1914 -- valid
Synchiropus kuiteri Fricke, 1992 -- valid
Synchiropus laddi Schultz in Schultz et al., 1960 -- valid
Synchiropus lateralis (Richardson, 1844) -- valid
Synchiropus lineolatus (Valenciennes in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1837) -- valid
Synchiropus marmoratus (Peters, 1855) -- valid -- marbled dragonet, marbled dragonet
Synchiropus minutulus Fricke, 1981 -- valid
Synchiropus monacanthus Smith, 1935 -- valid
Synchiropus morrisoni Schultz in Schultz et al., 1960 -- valid
Synchiropus moyeri Zaiser and Fricke, 1985 -- valid
Synchiropus novaecaledoniae Fricke, 1993 -- valid
Synchiropus ocellatus (Pallas, 1770) -- valid
Synchiropus orstom Fricke, 2000 -- valid
Synchiropus phaeton (Günther, 1861) -- valid
Synchiropus picturatus (Peters, 1877) -- valid
Synchiropus postulus Smith, 1963 -- valid
Synchiropus randalli Clark and Fricke, 1985 -- valid
Synchiropus richeri Fricke, 2000 -- valid
Synchiropus rosulentus Randall, 1999 -- valid
Synchiropus rubrovinctus (Gilbert, 1905) -- valid
Synchiropus sechellensis Regan, 1908 -- valid
Synchiropus signipinnis Fricke, 2000 -- valid
Synchiropus splendidus (Herre, 1927) -- valid -- Mandarinfish
Synchiropus springeri Fricke, 1983 -- valid
Synchiropus stellatus Smith, 1963 -- valid
Synchiropus zamboangana Seale, 1910 -- valid

[Samper]

Simply amazing. Thank you though for that information. Too bad there isn't an icon with a foot in the mouth. Also that website is amazing. I didn't know that anything like that existed except for this cousin of it. Tree of Life Web Project

[Ninong]

ITIS is a federal government entity. I believe it operates out of the Smithsonian. The California Academy of Sciences is another great source, especially for fish. They maintain a very extensive fish catalogue with references to the scientific literature on each species.

[Minh Nguyen]

If you give them food, which should not be a problem in your tank, Mandarins are very hardy fish. Extremly disease resistant. Get whichever Dragonette you like best. I certainly like the Mandarin much better than the Scooter.
Avoid adding wrasse into your system. My Sixline wrasse attack and blinded my Mandarin and she eventually died of starvation. The wrasse come out after this attack but it was months before I can do this. It was very hard to remove the wrasse from my 450 g system.

[Hebert2580]

A scooter blenny was second or third fish, My tank is only about 3 months old... The fish is doing great, he eats fine and he loves is home, even tho the books say hes a difficult fish to havem I found my scooter blenny to be very easy to keep.. I have a pic of him in my profile...